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For example, if a toddler hears a sentence that contains two noun phrases, she can infer that that sentence describes an event with two participants. This constrains the meaning that the verb in that sentence can have. Fisher presented 3 and 5-year-old children a video in which one participant caused a second participant to move.
Double entendres generally rely on multiple meanings of words, or different interpretations of the same primary meaning. They often exploit ambiguity and may be used to introduce it deliberately in a text. Sometimes a homophone can be used as a pun. When three or more meanings have been constructed, this is known as a "triple entendre," etc. [4]
Pangram: a sentence which uses every letter of the alphabet at least once; Tautogram: a phrase or sentence in which every word starts with the same letter; Caesar shift: moving all the letters in a word or sentence some fixed number of positions down the alphabet; Techniques that involve semantics and the choosing of words
The sentence "time flies like an arrow" is in fact often used to illustrate syntactic ambiguity. [1] Modern English speakers understand the sentence to unambiguously mean "Time passes fast, as fast as an arrow travels". But the sentence is syntactically ambiguous and alternatively could be interpreted as meaning, for example: [2]
In addition, children are able to form conjoined sentences, using and. [5] This suggests that there is a vocabulary spurt between the time that the child's first word appears, and when the child is able to form more than two words, and eventually, sentences.
[5] The holophrastic hypothesis argues that children use single words to refer to different meanings in the same way an adult would represent those meanings by using an entire sentence or phrase. There are two opposing hypotheses as to whether holophrases are structural or functional in children. The two hypotheses are outlined below.
The sentence can be read as "Reginam occidere nolite, timere bonum est, si omnes consentiunt, ego non. Contradico." ("don't kill the Queen, it is good to be afraid, even if all agree I do not. I object."), or the opposite meaning "Reginam occidere nolite timere, bonum est; si omnes consentiunt ego non contradico.
This example turns on the two meanings of German modern: the adjective meaning English 'modern', and the verb meaning 'to rot'. [8] The theme of the "picture exhibition" in the first clause lends itself to interpreting modern as an adjective meaning 'contemporary', until the last two words of the sentence: